The Farmington School District will spend $203,000 on a pair of improvement projects following a school board vote Monday.

The district will spend $103,000 to install a sprinkler system on the east fields at Farmington High School and $100,000 on maintenance issues at Farmington Elementary School.

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Money from the projects will come from a bond approved by voters for a new elementary school that is not yet needed.

The FHS fields are currently watered with a hose and track-style sprinklers that require a lot of manual work, but finance director Carl Colmark said that system has not done a good enough job. The school has had to rest the soccer and lacrosse fields to keep them in good shape. They were not available for community use at all last summer.

“The grass was starting to be destroyed,” Colmark said.

The FES work includes maintenance issues like painting some faded wall panels and repairing the seals on outside doors so snow and dirt don’t blow in underneath.

“It’s just a lot of things that accumulate in terms of what we want to have done there so the building looks in tip-top shape,” Colmark said.

Board members voted unanimously to approve the projects, though some objected to the source of funding for the work. Both Laura Beem and Brian Treakle suggested money for facilities projects should come from the fees users pay to play on school fields or rent space in school buildings.

“We’ve got a lot of other things to spend that $100,000 on,” Treakle said.

Colmark said the district is looking at changes that will allow fees to pay for facilities projects. But he said it is important for the district to maintain appealing facilities.

“If we put a good product out there and we have some happy constituents, it will go a long way for us,” he said.